Note 39 — LECTURE I. (17th October 1881.) CHRISTIAN AND PAGAN BURIAL—VIKING BURIALS.

Suorri says that the custom of burning the body was over before the time when the historical sagas begin their chronicle of events. The fact that it is represented in the mythological sagas as the burial rite of the Æsir, in the Twilight of the Gods, shows that it was out of memory as a human custom in Iceland.